What is college? What is health care?

I know, I know. The only “sophisticated” answer is that these things just go without saying. Who asks that? We just all know what these things are, right? Its not that hard.

But these questions are so key, so central. They begin and end the debates. If something is a right what is that a right to? What, exactly, should we expect from these rights?

Start with college. If it ought to be free, then what counts? What institutions? What formats? Who decides? And what happens when college just isn’t the best way to get educated or learn a trade? Certainly this will happen one day—just a few generations ago almost no one went to college, and those who did had quite a different experience than students today. Were they exercising this same right back then? When college changed, and when it changes again, will we still have a right to a free version of what existed before, when we thought up the right in the first place?

Now to health care. What is for me health care is not for you health care. I often go to the beach to clear my mind. It’s the healthiest thing I do each week—a true medicine for my body and spirit. Without this, my mental health would suffer. Others, however, find no such cure there. Others turn to other activities, and some to drugs—legal and illegal. For them, this is health care.

Health care. Care of health. Wellness maintenance. Body optimization.

(Already the problem emerges.)

Health care is not some coherent, boxed-up good. It’s not a cut-and-dry service. What counts as health care today—massages, chiropractic, Xanax-before-the-dentist—did not count just a few years ago. Insurance didn’t cover. Many common modern-day treatments, or the causation between treatments and wellness—didn’t even exist.

The questions, then: Did our grandparents have a right to the services we claim today are “health care?” A right they simply could not exercise because the suppliers of that right did not yet exist? And do individuals have any say about what, for them uniquely, constitutes a health care good or service?

No, you say. This is ridiculous, you say. I’m being unnecessarily difficult, you say.

I won’t concede that. My question is eminently fundamental. If I have a right to free college, what is college? If I have a right to health care, with is health care?